Comments
Cush
Spirituals EP
Cultural miscegenation (race mixing) has created much great American popular art. Wouldn't have Rock & Roll without it. Leave it to amorphous alt-rock collective Cush to push cultural reappropriation and reinvention paralleling Paul Simon's Graceland adventure. Instead of sub-Saharan township jive, however, the Cushites make early African-American sacred songs their own on this Spirituals EP. A tense dynamic balances archival respect for source material, punk rock giddiness for plumbing something exotically cool, and a tender, and intense love for the Lord of whom they sing. Most revelatory of the disc's six tracks are the call-and-response stompers, sounding like what The Make-Up might be were gospel more than a pose to them. Elsewhere are subtle uses of drones and folkie recastings of simple, emotionally-charged hymnody. A bracing detour for a crucial act. [Northern/ Jamie Lee Rake]
This album review was originally printed in ISSUE 97 of HM Magazine. Order the Print Version of HM for tons more reviews of new albums.
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